This past weekend at the Contemporary Cultural Center in Barcelona, Spain, an international and multi-lingual group of bloggers, artists, musicians, and lawyers met to discuss the Free Culture movement which aims to reform intellectual property law into a workable paradigm for the digital era.

More than just another intellectual property geeks’ get-together, however, COPYFIGHT was also an important bridge conference between today's English and Spanish speaking copyright reform proponents on the internet.

Unfortunately, many of the staunchest Free Culture proponents throughout Latin America were unable to attend the conference. Timing was especially inopportune as it coincided with the Weblogs.Comunicacion conference in Mexico City which also attracted many Free Culture heavyweights from the region such as ALT1040, Isopixel, and eCuaderno.

Leading up to COPYFIGHT, the Spanish blog, Elastico, ran an excellent series introducing English speaking activists to a Spanish speaking audience. With that in mind, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor to travel through Latin America – virtually, of course – and take an abbreviated survey of the Free Culture movement and the voices behind it.

Senator Fernando Flores was the first surprise. Flores was one of the youngest members of the Allende government. He was with Allende on Chile's September 11th (1973), when Pinochet executed his (American supported) coup. Flores has since had an extraordinary career — prison, exiled to America, time as a scholar studying philosophy and computer science, fantastically successful career in business, exploiting the insights he drew from academics, and now as a Senator (and one time candidate for President).

what you want, but let me know, cite me, mention that I'm the author, play, change, inspire yourself, modify what you'd like, add things, take them away, but don't sell it and don't charge to show it to others. Oh, and you can share it, but with the same license.

This is my license. There are others, they all include attribution, permit or don't permit derivative works, fees, etc. And this is the spirit of the Creative Commons licenses, recently inaugurated in Chile. And for everyone with blogs or that do poems, fiction, music, video, photos, or anything creative, should have one.

A lot of people – the organizers spoke of 1500 attendees – filled the biggest salon of the Hotel Sheraton Retiro in Buenos Aires.

Frankly, I was really surprised by the large attendance. It remains auspicious that something so dry as a legal license has generated such interest. It must be recognized that the people of Creative Commons have done a great job to that respect; of showing that their project is, before anything else, a form of supporting innovation and the possibility to freely produce content without the legal threat of large corporations.

The “Creative Commonists” seem to be taking the world by storm, and they certainly seem to have made an impact on the local audience, including myself. I will be eagerly awaiting their visit next September for the launch of the local CC license, which is getting worked on with the help of the OSDE foundation.

Speaking of Eduardo Arcos, his blog, ALT1040 has become one of the major outlets of the Free Culture (Cultura Libre) movement in Latin America. He recently reported that the Mexican version of the RIAA – SOMEXFON – was planning an aggressive campaign of enforcing copyright royalties which included “the use of songs in establishments like restaurants, gymnasiums (including trainers who put on music), bars, hotels, commercial centers, hospitals, school dances, buses, urban transport, party halls, among others.” Arcos lists an example of prices which includes US $370 to listen to music at a party of more than 200 guests and US $1,650 a year to play music in a cafe. Then, pro-actively, he finds a Mexican senator in disagreement with SOMEXFON's fees and encourages his readers to write the senator encouraging reform.

In putting this together, I have tried to concentrate on the most important developments regarding Free Culture in Latin America. If, however, I have neglected any information or important links, please feel more than free to leave them below as a comment.

12 comments

Well i let you know about the Project. We just began working before the CC Summit in June. The hosting institution for the Peruvian CC licences is CPSR-Peru (http://www.cpsr-peru.org). The Project Leads: Pedro Mendizabal (CPSR Peru President) and me (from CENTIC http://www.centic.org). We are both lawyers specialized in copyright and cyberlaw. The team is formed also by Katitza Rodriguez, lawyer too and Director of CPSR Peru) and Arturo Matos, engineer and consultant on IT and software development. We are just in the implementation process of the licences and plan to launch them in December. Plans are to also translate the licences in Quechua and Aymara both native languages of ancient Peruvian culture so we can reach the global Peruvian community.

I think it’s great that you write about the development of free culture in Latin America. In Colombia we’re also working in developing CC Colombia. Jaime Daniel Rojas, Carolina Botero and myself are coordinating the project, with the help of two universities, Universidad del Rosario and Escuela de Administración de Negocios EAN. So far we’ve contacted many representative institutions to talk to them about the project, we’ve created a discussion list, and we are preparing the first official draft of the licenses. We are planning to launch in December or January. If you want, I’ll keep you up to date.

Hi David: Great article!! Many thanks for spread the world about free culture and copyright reform being happening this part of the world. CC-Perú is just starting and we hope soon has a wonderfull webpage where to share news and latest developments with all the community!!!.

In the meantime, I would like to take the opportunity to share with you the work that CPSR-Perú is doing in the field of “copyright reform”. Basically we are participating as ad hoc observer at the “WIPO Development Agenda
Meetings”:http://www.cpsr-peru.org/lpi/ompi/da/ The DA is led by Brazil, Argentina, and 12 others developing nations- that have issued a strong call for reform at WIPO and adopted a “Development Agenda” in an effort to replace WIPO’s mission of maximizing intellectual property rights. This is the latest
CPSR-Perú´s statement present yesterday at WIPO http://www.cpsr-peru.org/lpi/ompi/da/iim3/

As you problably know, the US is exporting the DMCA through the FTA. In this moment, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia as observer are negotiating this treaty with the S. They are incorporating all the “DRM”:http://www.cpsr-peru.org/lpi/mpt/ provisions incorporated in the DMCA, the Safe harbours provision for ISP liabilities and many other issues. You will find more info. about it here: http://www.cpsr-peru.org/lpi/tlc/ We are working with EFF advicing policy makers and NGOs (librarians, educators, ISPs, archieves, etc) in relation to the impact of the FTA to our society in the copyright field.

We were also following the “Casting Treaty”, Here you will find the last info. about the recently Latinoamerican consultation in relation to this WIPO treaty.http://www.cpsr-peru.org/lpi/ompi/sscr/

Thanks so much for the update and useful links. I hope this post continues to attract those involved in the Free Culture movement from around Latin America and that you all come back to keep us updated.